Gallows Humour
by The Hart and Hound
Summary: When it was calmer, the bleeding stopped. Jaina is not welcomed by the Alliance any longer. ThrallJaina.
1. it did not cut in but it spoke

Title: Gallows Humour (1/4)

Author: tsubaki-hana

Series: Warcraft

Rating: T

Disclaimer: Warcraft belongs to Blizzard Entertainment.

Summary: When it was calmer, the bleeding stopped. Jaina is not welcomed by the Alliance any longer. ThrallJaina.

* * *

1

Your hand full of hours, you came to me – and I said:

'Your hair is not brown.'

You lifted it, lightly,

on to balance the grief,

it was heavier than I.

* * *

"I do not think myself so great," she says between her teeth, staring at the space between the beams of wood. Jaina is supposed to be sleeping, resting, somehow making herself feel better. Instead, she is turned up, upset like water glasses and other things that make horrible noises when broken, but she bites her lip and grins against the idea. I am a fortress, she thinks, with bricks and mortar and bones ground up between, built up by other people. She groans against her masonry, and pulls the coverlet from the foot of her bed to cover her.

In the gentle heat of early autumn, she is suddenly very cold.

"Women are pillars," her mother had said, when her hair was still braided and she wore simple linen shifts and wondered when Arthas was going to visit her next. (_The Menethil children are much sturdier than you, with wide arms and thick hair, and you had imagined them that they were yours to have then. They weren't. __**Aren't**_.) She stuck her blonde hair in her mouth like wheat and chewed until she had nothing but shaggy edged locks, scratching against the base of her neck and her ears.

"You mean like the stone that holds up the ceiling," she said, curling a lip around the stray hair. "But that's silly, because you are not stone."

Her mother was a frail beauty, and smiled weakly, lips thinning into a sickle of chapped skin and greyed pink. She had only just recovered from the fever, something little that her father and his advisors did not seem to know how to dictate. (_Twenty something years later, you haven't figured it out either, how such a small thing would leave you obsolete, a decorative piece. You can summon demons if you wish, throw the burning cold fire of the nether, and just as easily transport yourself from the frontiers of Desolace to the cold, wavering heights of the Hinterlands. But you cannot defeat death. It's funny how things like that humble you._)

"I am not stone, and I don't hold up buildings, nothing so large." Her mother smiled and pulled the hair from her mouth. "I am a human, a person, and you will find that they are very fragile. It is my mind that makes me feel bigger than I am."

"If you are so small, then what do you hold, mama?" Jaina had asked.

"I cannot hold much, but just enough. I support ideas, people who can fulfill my hopes when my gender gets in the way of my fulfilling them myself."

She scowled then, shaking her uneven hair while her mother looked at her fondly, if a bit sadly. People did not need to hold each other up. That is why they each had two feet and as a small child, Jaina was not ready to confront such an idea, still isn't in part. (_Like if you admit she was right, something cracks and crumbles. You think it might be your confidence, but aren't willing to give it a name just yet._) Her mother put burning hot hands on each of her cheeks and kissed her. She would pass away only a year later. They filled her tomb with flowers instead of a corpse. The plague left nothing of her behind.

The dusty arches of her room come into focus like arms over her head. I am a fortress, she thinks again, mind spinning back into the cramped space of her head, and I am made of stone which will not crumble underneath pressure. She will support her own ideas, independent of anyone else, and keep them as her own. She does not need someone else to help her align her people peacefully with both the Alliance and the Horde. (_But oh, how you dread it, how you shudder and think of tenterhook smiles that catch your lips and -pull-._)

Jaina rolls over in her bed, and tries to think of bricks and mortar. Mageweave is not easily torn, but doesn't feel as sturdy over the line of her shoulders, flimsy and smooth and white as bone. "I will match when they tear me open," she thinks wryly, shifting to stand, one bird-fragile hand pushing against her collar bone.

* * *

"You're incompetent," says the magistrate from Stormwind, wearing his pressed blue and gold finery with regality that belongs on the face of another, someone less nasal and thin. She would laugh at him if she could, but Jaina knows better than most how much she relies on the good graces of the Alliance and the Kingdom of Stormwind. It hurts, being reliant on someone else, like there is some debt to be paid, and yes, there is a debt. The magistrates and advisors will see that it is remembered as well. For now, she will let the man dress her station down, and she will smile and wish him well when he finally leaves. (_You will burn things, quietly angry, as is your wont. The Barrens are large and cold at night, and none will wonder at the little deaths you suffer each time you bring flame from your fingers._)

"I am sorry you feel I am lacking," she says, neutral, pleasant, golden and warm as is expected. "I will try to improve my performance so that you may later find me worthy of this province. But need I remind the Magister that Theramore is under the jurisdiction of my family first and foremost, and that Stormwind has room for criticism, but no action."

She sits, stomach churning with nervousness and rage. (_And that is a hard thing to swallow, even as it twists in your stomach now._) The blue velvet of her seat is very nearly new and untouched by her term as ruler. Thrones are for majesties and deities, she thinks, and chews the dried skin from the side of her thumbnail.

"That is not what I mean, nor is it proper of a junior ruler to be impertinently reminding the Kingdom of Stormwind and its senior representative that it has no direct control of Theramore." The Magister speaks through the back of his throat, and Jaina very nearly winces at the hissing of his tongue. A snake, she thinks, like the ones they sell in Orgrimmar. She has never been to Orgrimmar, but Thrall tries to tell her about it all the time and it's...

"Miss Proudmoore, we find your pitiful excuse for an alliance with the Horde absolutely appalling. What do you have to say about allowing enemies into a territory of humans, honest _good_ people that cannot be at risk by the orcs' barbarism."

Jaina smiles, and thinks of lightning and rain. The monsoon season is halfway done, and she feels as listless as it. Somewhere on the plains of Durotar ride her allies, neighbors, whatever the orcs think of themselves to her human colony. For her part, she would like to consider them friends, but even she knows that is asking for much. She has their respect; she will not push for their hearts which are hard against her and would drum her deep into the ground with each breath.

What would Thrall do, she finds herself wondering for not the first time since this has begun. Jaina is a small woman by comparison to most, and while she is well loved, she is not always treated as a leader. (_You didn't want to be one; sometimes you wonder if other people know that_.) She wants to sweep this little man away with the wave of a hand, no, a wind. Like the spirits that her orcen friend can do with words alone. "I believe I have had this conversation before. With some more important than yourself. And I will say little save that the affairs of Stormwind are not ours, and you are not neighbor to the Horde as it were. Our nation will make friends as it sees fit."

Sputter as you like, fool, she thinks. She is still leader here, if only by the respect she has garnered as a mage and princess of sorts. (_Even if you don't like it._) Her little hands sit tense on the wood of her throne, too smooth for splinters, but still feels as though she is on a seat of needles. From across the room, the magister chews the corner of his mouth, and scowls.

"You can be removed," he says, "all leaders can be removed."

"But you can't today."

A tense silence sits between them. Jaina smiles, as she has been taught to when upset or under pressure, but even she knows it is more like the clenching of teeth, baring them like a wolf. Someday, she thinks, I will bother to bite back.

* * *

She should have bit back sooner.

* * *

Messages between Orgrimmar and Theramore have always been infrequent and terse at best. The government of the horde has little to say to the small colony of Kul Tiras, and Jaina very rarely sends notes at all, but instead will ask for an audience herself. "I like to be able to say things face to face," Thrall recalls her saying, her human mouth very small and feminine. Breakable. He has broken ale tankards with greater effort than what it would take for him to snap her jaw in half. (_It pains him to think like that; her small face is glass-smooth still, and he will not raise a hair against his friend in violence or morbid curiosity._)

He thinks this now, settling over a leather sheath of papers, papers, thousands of papers that come from every reach of Azeroth like the seagulls he has learned to hate and love. Each word cries out for attention, and Thrall, a warrior at heart, doesn't know whether or not to pass over the request of the Darkspear for an extra vanguard to protect their efforts at Sen'jin Village, or to send it to the Plaguelands to help Sylvanas. Each detail is important, essential. He would not allow himself to be less than attentive on the battlefield, and he will not allow it now.

Even if it means repressing the impulse sends the extra hands to Sen'jin. (_He loves Sylvanas' people no more than Jaina. But he is a leader before an individual now, and when did that happen?_)

In the weight of the papers, no matter how tedious and boring he finds them, he finds no sign of anything from Dustwallow Marsh. Not even a complaint about the Kul Tiras sailors. The human presence just south of the foot of his land (_a viper waiting to strike_) is completely and dangerously silent.

"Nothing," says the advisor, when he bothers to ask, "nothing has come from Theramore."

"I would speak with Vol'jin, then," he says, and frowns, tusks hard and unrelenting against the curve of his mouth. "It is unusual for things to be this quiet, and the Darkspear always know something of their neighbors business."

"Is' not a bad thing, to know what de man next door is doin'," says another Darkspear from between his own white tusks. He grins, wicked and wide and joyful in the way that Thrall has only seen other trolls do. Their people are one of extremes and opposites, always together. Standing in the corner of the room, Thrall can recognize him as a scout.

Thrall laughs, wholeheartedly as he does when he is truly amused. "You would, my friend. You would think it is a good idea. And I have no doubt that either Vol'jin or myself has sent you to do just that and I have failed to remember another thing."

A clucking chuckle. For all his leanness and harsh coloring (fire-bright hair, not red or orange but hot nonetheless), Thrall knows him to be good-natured. During his time as the Warchief, Thrall has learned each of the races particular traits to the best of his ability, and besides his own people, it is the Darkspear that he loves best despite all their wildness and slurring. They are a loyal people, like orcs, and humble compared to their relatives that live in their great fallen empire, proud and violent. Darkspear feel a slow burn of greatness, one that will last longer and be better remembered.

Vol'jin himself walks towards him, moving easily in his armor and tribal feathers. He is not so kindly as the scout is, but it is to be expected. It was not so long ago that Vol'jin was made to be leader of the Darkspear, and he is still young and angry over the displacement of his people. Thrall can remember a similar emotion of his own during his first years of leading the orcish Horde.

"You'd best not let him any mo' room, Thrall. 'Dis one slides right in, makes 'imself at home, and steals ya' ale like it was his own," says Vol'jin, and Thrall laughs again, watching the two of them. The scout laughs too, as though to pretend it wasn't true.

Anyone of them would do many unspeakable things if they felt they needed to. Many Darkspear would do it just because Thrall had asked them to. It's things like that which make Thrall feel a chill of pride and terror.

"So what's 'dis about?" asks Vol'jin.

"Theramore," says Thrall.

Vol'jin's smirk is slow, pulling, making Thrall want to both smile back and hit the troll to make his stop. Vol'jin's smiles are not kindly, not the way that many of his people are. "Ah," he says, "The humans in Marshwallow. Your human friend not doin' as she should?"

"Hardly," Thrall growls. "And you know my feelings on Jaina Proudmoore. I would not have you trying to blame her for everything foul that happens between Tanaris and Azshara."

"'Dat be true. She be as good a human as the Horde can expect. But if Theramore be botherin' you then it be Proudmoore that be botherin' you," Vol'jin says with a shrug. "Last I heard from ma' boys, Jaina and the men of Kul Tiras have been keepin' to themselves. Somethin' about visitors from the Eastern Kingdoms. Been a little tense there ever since Admiral Proudmoore's death, no matter how good your human friend is."

"That was weeks ago," Thrall says with a frown. "No less than two. That's a long time to not hear anything from your neighbor. Lady Proudmoore is always careful to see that information gets to where it needs to go."

The scout, quiet until now, steps forward. "Aye, that she is. Or at least she's careful to leak info'mation where it can get out more easily."

"Then you know," says Thrall, "you know what is happening in the marsh."

"As well as can be said fo' myself," the troll says humbly. "But even then, it will be second hand from Magna Aegwynn to me. But this is what she say; the men from Stormwind are talkin' bout replacing Proudmoore and Proudmoore ain't havin' it."

Thrall leans back and snorts. Even Vol'jin is surprised enough to drop his slow smile and take up a frown of surprise. It is not what either is expecting. It is not what either one wants, no matter what postulating and joking that Vol'jin may do during the day.

"You are not serious." Vol'jin is blunt now, no drawl in his voice.

"I am."

It is unspoken between then how important this is. Thrall swallows and paces for a moment, feeling the crack of the leather jerkin beneath his armor, looking at the red stone wall of Grommash Hold with a scowl."Of course she will not let them have what they want," he says. "She is a warrior, if a very small one. I know Jaina."

"Hmph, dictatorships, aristocracy, nobility, it's a wonder de Alliance doesn't go crazy tryin' to keep up with their government. What is Proudmoore anyway? Princess? Regent to 'de King? 'Dere's got to be a way she can tell them bastards no. If nothing else, she's liked by the people in 'de swamps and 'de city. By Hakkar, the Horde likes 'er as well as 'dey can," says Vol'jin.

No one comments on this. Thrall doesn't because he does not want to question Vol'jin's respect for Jaina. Vol'jin says nothing, and will likely not speak so much for a great amount of time.

The silence that follows after is tentative and dark. They live in caves, the people of Orgrimmar, and they have never felt cold before, but Thrall feels a chill rise up his spine, not unlike when the thunder speaks to him, and tells him of the rare rain in the desert. The walls are red and slick from the humidity of the late summer.

"Send out an eye, "he says, "for Jaina." His fists clench, but he smiles. Thrall has learned duplicity after years of cruelty, and even if it is not for the same reasons now, he feels like a liar for pretending. What he really wants to do is throw all of the politics in pretty papers and requests from his desk and talk sense into the Alliance. (_You're not worried._) "We are her friends, and I would like it if I knew how she fares against her visitors."

(_Yet._)

* * *

She had half-heartedly hoped that when they came for her, it would be in masks and fangs, and all the things she had been told were foul and evil. (_Jaina has never been vary clear on who __**they**__ were, but she trusts the turning of her stomach, and the cold sweat on her neck_.) Her father had a delightful imagination, fueled by several campaigns against the Orcish Horde and the Burning Legion. "Warlocks and demons, the whole lot of them," he would say. "Can't tell the damned difference between either one. But I will always raise a sword for my country and my children," said the Admiral, more often than not still wearing his tabard and mail.

Jaina had smiled then, covered up by her quilts, toes cold and petite, belonging to a body that is barely more than an infant. Golden curls. Small white shoulders. She had been a very human girl, easily bruised, easily turned against others. She was raised on blood, on the horror of battle, and found more fantasy in it than reality. Orcs and fel guard and Shivarra were monsters that came out of fairy tales of the Titans, little distractions from ultimate happiness. "Of course, the Light always wins," she would say, and her father and mother would tell her that was right and send her to bed before she could think to ask otherwise. Ignorance was bred and taught to the nobility, and Jaina's only real job as far as they were concerned was to marry a man who would take care of her and maintain her ignorance. It was unseemly for a woman to be anything other than a paragon of goodness. (_It never felt real, not until Arthas and Lordaeron. You weren't happy then at all._) She had smiled then, and patted her father on his knotted hand, criss-crossed with scars and gnarls.

"I love you," she had said.

"I love you," she says, and tries not to think too much about how cold his gravestone is in comparison to his armor back when she was so thin skinned. Looking at it now, tall and frigid and grim, she thinks it might suit him. She also wonders if that is somehow wrong.

This cold burns, hurts. She imagines her fingers blackening and curling in with frostbite. Jaina struggles to not laugh aloud.

"You know what they want to do," says Aegwynn. Jaina does not startle easily, but very nearly jumps when the elderly sorceress lays a hand on her. She can count the blue veins moving atop it, spy the heartbeats like somehow it mattered. After all, Aegwynn lives on the good graces of her magic, not her health. Jaina tries very hard not to take her mentor and guardian for granted.

"Of course, I've known since he first got here," she says with a coy smile. "He made as much very clear to me. He stopped short of calling me an obstinate bitch."

Aegywnn smiles, and Jaina is glad for it, watching the wrinkles and age spots collide into one another, joyous. The elderly guardian does not often smile in truth, rare like water in the southern wastes of Kalimdor. "Well it wouldn't be like he was incorrect entirely," she says with a twist of her lips, "but I daresay that if anyone is an obstinate bitch, it's me. But that's not what I'm worried about."

Jaina smiles again, rolling a shoulder, feeling the pauldrons on her shoulder scratch against the column of her neck. She thinks of Kaldorei statues, overgrown and choked by the wood. (_You do not think yourself so lovely as the images of Azshara or Elune; you are but a branch next to their elven beauty, a common oak._) The filigree on the tips of the stonecloth is bitterly cold next to her skin.

She rolls a tip to the side of her head and waits for the scratches. "I am not so concerned about what a regent can do. I am concerned about what my absence will do for our northern allies. I do not expect King Wrynn's acting rulers to be so kind to the Darkspear in the Echo Isles, or the tauren of Thunder Bluff."

Aegwynn's amusement is always sharp, a bark or a hoot like some vexed animal. "So you are already thinking in plots and coup d'etats. That's good, good, I see that you can be taught after all."

Jaina frowns. "I must think of our people and our allies."

"And nothing of Thrall?" says Aegwynn with a touch of sarcasm.

Jaina looks to her father's gravestone and frowns. She tries not to think of sinking ships and patricide. (_Which is unfortunate, because you helped both along not so long ago_.) "They will not even consider the orcs."

"Then we are all _optimism_ today!" Aegwynn turns back towards the open gates of the city, sneering. "I can always trust you to clear up all my worries!"

"Magna, with all respect, this is not something I was prepared to deal with now. Your sarcasm is unappreciated."

Aegwynn looks at her, contemplative. "Then when, Jaina?" she says. "Surely you didn't think that they would leave well enough alone until your term as ruler of Theramore to come to an end." The elder sorceress frowns, but this time Jaina sees something of regret in it. She will not apologize for her wit. That is simply what she is and does, but Jaina hopes that perhaps the older woman will have a solution. "Did you just think that there would be another battle for Mout Hyjal, where you can buddy up with the Horde like no one cares and no one will say anything and you can finally justify your decisions? That's not realistic," she says, "that's a fool's hope that has been proven vain time and again."

She feels the cut of the filigree at her neck and Jaina feels her temper rise. "Then what would you have me do, Magna?" She says, vicious, spitting. Jaina is not normally like this, and she can recognize this from somewhere behind her eyes. It feels like looking through a hole in the wall. (_You remember doing that not so long ago; the other side of the brick was covered in ash and sulphur from demon fire, and you, pale-eyed, staring out from a great charred blackness._) "I will not betray my friendship to the Horde. We have been able to cooperate, roughly, perhaps, but still without too much trouble. Even then, all the problems are within those who are holding on to their biases."

"I hate the Burning Legion," says Aegwynn. "And the orcs once were the hand of the Legion into Azeroth. Do you think it was so easy for me to look Thrall in the face and accept that I would have to obey him if you were to will it so? Be realistic!" She snaps.

Jaina is ashamed for a moment, trying to fight down her anger and flushed face with tiny clenched hands, a court lady's hands. (_You are prideful enough of yourself to wash the gromsblood and silverleaf from your hands and replace their astringency with soft, soft peacebloom_.) She feels the tendons beneath her skin strain and sees them turn white against the underside of her skin.

"You are older than me," she says.

"So?"

She swallows, angry again. "You are older than me, and I will bow to that wisdom, and that the Legion has done more evil to you than to myself, even indirectly. But unlike you, I am still young, and my heart knows forgiveness."

Aegwynn pauses for a long time yet. Neither can look away from the older woman's hands, which are a writhing plain of veins and old burns from many years of alchemy and struggle. Tree roots, rough and dark and cracked. Long-fingered, mannish, not at all delicate like Jaina's own.

"You should beat that kindness out of yourself," she says at last. Jaina matches her blue eyes up to Aegwynn's face and tries not to think of charred rooms and dead spaces.

And then she hears the crunch of plate boots.

* * *

It is Aegwynn that walks into Grommash Hold, bleeding from the arm and grimacing against the steady beat of her heart against her torn flesh. Thrall smells her before he sees her, the tang of magic like the smell of hot copper and burnt skin. His own guard is stunned by the small, twist of a woman that stands in the center of his hall, and he waves them down when Aegwynn glares at him from beneath the folds of her eyelids. (_They are very nearly sealed shut; Thrall will not say that she has been crying._)

"Jaina has been betrayed," she rasps. "Your spy did a great deal of watching all the wrong people."

"So quickly you blame him," he says, and nods to an aide who runs from the room. Thrall trusts him to retrieve Vol'jin and the shaman healers down the hall. "But I would instead know what has happened to Lady Proudmoore. Your injury is grave."

"It is not for his race that I blame him, but for his hesitance to actually do his job," says Aegwynn. She frowns, pushing the pelt beneath her with a rough booted foot. Thrall very nearly growls in frustration, but leadership has tempered his impatience, and he instead stretches himself to full height, stretching himself thin and far from where his feet are. The earth sighs beneath him and warms.

Aegwynn swallows again.

"She is not dead," she says at last. "Or at least wasn't when last I saw her. It was by her magic that I stand here now. We were fleeing into the marsh when she sent me from her side. We were meant to run to Mudsprocket and the goblins to their tender mercies," she says and twists her mouth bitterly. "I do not know if she was able to defeat or escape those Stormwind usurpers."

"Then it is Stormwind and the Alliance that brings this," says Thrall, quiet for a moment.

"Isn't it always?" says Aegwynn, who smiles and brings her good arm up to cover her eyes, laughing. "Their betrayal of us is so complete that I find myself standing in the heart of the Horde empire, and this time not on my own terms."

Thrall stills himself, and turns away from the old sorceress. He is not unfamiliar with Aegwynn's dislike of him and the orcish horde, and every once in a while he can understand why. He remembers his own one-time resentment of all things human, when he was young and naive and on a quest for a perfect world.

(_You didn't find it, even if you found many friends. You can still remember Grom's biting laughter when you had told him all that you hoped for. "There are dreams, and then there are impossibilities, Durotan's son," he had said, and you watching his very red and tired eyes, wondered if he had ever hoped for the same._

_Quite possibly, he had come from the very rocks of the earth, shrieking in fury. You preferred to think he was invincible like that. One of you has to be strong._)

"You will find Jaina, yes, Warchief?" asks Aegwynn. "I prefer her with the Horde than dead or imprisoned by an ungrateful kingdom from across the sea. We have worked hard for our peace, and I would not have it taken from she who worked hardest."

It would not be a lie to say that it was so. Thrall has been careful in his steps since the beginning of his leadership. He had not been learned in politics and economics, and a dozen other things that most people never even have to consider. He had support through elders and friends when he would humble himself to ask (_which you did more and more as you grew older and wiser_).

But Jaina, with her little hands and quiet voice that make him feel so large and noisy, had stepped in to carve her people into a hard country without the support that he had. She was younger than him, only the littlest bit, but when she moved through the room, the spirits spoke of an oldness to her, a weariness of body that was premature for a woman not even halfway through her march in life. An old mind, said the wind, when she had held his hand on Razor Hill and smiled. He had been afraid he would ruin her with his friendship.

He did, of course. She had always smiled placidly and told him to think nothing of it. "We are friends, aren't we?" she said. He had heard similar words from another person not so long ago, with hair just as bright and gold in the sun. History repeats itself, that little niggling voice in the back of his head says, and Thrall swallows it down and bats away the fluttering of his heart.

Aegwynn watches him with that hawk-like attentiveness, cold and intelligent. He might have been weary of her, hoped her dead in battle like a weak man if he knew her dedication to Jaina to be anything less than complete.

"Jaina and I are friends," he says at last. "For good or evil, we are friends, and I would not turn my back on her like a coward."

"Despite the possible conflict that harboring a fugitive will cause?"

Thrall smiles around his tusks, lips stretched and chapped. "What is a country border but a small drawn line on a map? Jaina will be as Horde, and the Horde protects its own."

(_Never mind that it is __**you**__ that wants to cover that woman, like you can stop something inevitable_.)

* * *

Continued

* * *

A/N: I'm going to be rather unapologetic for the choice of format and tense used in this. However, if you see any errors in history or grammar, feel free to inform me. As always, reviews are welcome.


	2. willingly spoke to dry eyes

Title: Gallows Humour (2/4)

Author: tsubaki-hana

Series: Warcraft

Rating: T

Disclaimer: Warcraft belongs to Blizzard Entertainment.

Summary: When it was calmer, the bleeding stopped. (Jaina is no longer welcomed by the Alliance. Thrall/Jaina.)

* * *

2

They come to you on their ships, and make it their load,

then put it on sale in the markets of lust.

You smile at me from the deep.

I weep at you from the scale that's still light.

I weep: your hair is not brown.

* * *

"_You're a hard woman, Jaina," he says, and it is not his face she remembers so much as the curve of his chin and the blueness of his eyes. His eyes used to be like columbines and the rare blue lilies that she would see during the Darkmoon Faire, from Kalimdor which is at this time nothing but an idea and a place that the Kal'dorei elves come from. His entire frame is an assault to her own slight form, thick, sturdy. _

_You stole those eyes, she thinks awkwardly, and is uncomfortable for a moment in his gaze._

"_No more so than I have to be," she says and turns away, and defines the space with her delicate steps. There is not much room in the hallways of Dalaran's magic academies, only enough to contain herself and the empty spaces she needs to fill out where she is hollow. (_These are necessary, as if something might try to swell within her and break her. Add too much water, and she creaks in her bows, like a wood._) "You are just difficult to be with sometimes."_

_He laughs, like it doesn't disrupt the quiet of the academy, and she pull son the hem of her white sleeves, counting runes and grinding her teeth. Her friend and one-time lover has grown crass in his campaigns and studies as a paladin and as a prince. Arthas is the quintessential conqueror, and sometimes she wonders why that makes her so nervous._

_Arthas' smiles are frequent, charming, and she finds herself already forgiving him for the noisy disruption. She knows he means well, even if he does it in a way that she finds abrasive. (_His hands were abrasive too on your once flawless skin, the softness of a court lady who does not cut her fingers and arms while preparing reagents and power. His abrasiveness certainly didn't bother you **then**_**.**)_

"_Come back to Lordaeron," he says, greaved hands tight around her own. "I have seen your talents, and I know you could be nothing but useful in the North. The Scourge will be weak against your fey fire and intellect. Nothing that a mere warrior such as myself could do."_

"_Such humility," she says with a smile of her own, a real one, and clenches his fingers between her own. The intimacy is still there, hiding underneath half a decade of ambition and change. Against her will, she finds herself missing him lying against her."I never thought you would ask me to accompany you on any such quest. I thought you believed mages to be small boned men and women."_

"_A waste of space and resources?" he says with a wince. "I do," a slip of the tongue (_the truth_), "I did, but I have seen a great deal since then, and I would have you with me when next I campaign."_

"_Master Antonidas means to speak with me on some matter," says Jaina. "He may or may not let me go anywhere with you at all. But I know it is something to do with the Northern territories."_

_Arthas snorts, but maintains his smile. Arthas has always had respect for his elders, but grows weary of Antonidas and the Kirin Tor's rules and hierarchy. He has never been at a loss for words when face to face with the archmagi and their students. Jaina used to think it was because he was the nobility that the Kirin Tor and Dalaran had been built on. She of course knows better now. _

"_Then we shall do as Master Antonidas says, won't we Jaina?" Jaina watches Arthas sneer, and thinks how very frightening it makes his cornflower eyes look. "But if you need me for anything in this matter, remember my name and I will leave whatever battlefield I am on to aid you first."_

"_I do not need to be saved or cared for, Arthas," she says gently._

"_Of course not," he says. "You are, after all, a very hard woman."_

_She laughs, but for some reason doesn't really find it funny._

* * *

It is unfailingly humid in the marsh, as it is quiet and heavy on her ears. It sits stickily against the skin of her neck and against her cheeks that are alternately red and white from exertion and injury. The bone of her ankle is white and muddy with dirt, a clever root breaking out from the smoothness of her leg. The bloody bastion of her wound makes her vomit the first time she sees it. (_Fell like a little girl into a puddle, only this one has reeds and stones and fathoms, and those are reaching out for the hem of your robes so that you can't swim._) She, who has seen the ravaged lands that the Plague fell upon, and battled on the slopes of Hyjal, vomits at a bit of bone and red. She's quite certain she would have laughed at the prospect only a month ago, when the possibility of her being in combat seemed very far away.

(_You also thought it would be with a friend or two, and honorably, not hobbling away from your city like some sickly being. You even had dared to hope it would be in an offense against the Burning Blade members hiding in the caves of Durotar, with Thrall and Rexxar._)

It is late afternoon, and the creaks and whistles of Mudsprocket keep her awake despite her overwhelming exhaustion. Houses are built, machines are maintained, mouths are fed, and Jaina sits in a corner, quiet and unnoticed. She wants that, because if they fully know that she is there, she knows that it will cause trouble for them or for her.

The goblins are notoriously self-serving, but Jaina halfway knows what it is to be neutral, or at least pretend to be. As a human, she is repulsive to the Horde. As a peacemaker, she is repulsive to the Alliance. She grew into the role that Medivh had given her, and knew. It was as clear as breathing that she would either break or bend to fit one.

Running a skinned hand across the top of her leg, she snorts, and tries to think of the heat rather than the cartilage and muscle, and the goblin blacksmith that has gotten closer to her hiding place than she would like.

"They'll just sell us back," Aegwynn had said earlier, running from the sounds of drawn swords and the crier that declared the two of them as fugitives of the Alliance. (Y_ou thought it would hurt more than it did to hear that. It -had- hurt to see the guards that she knew by name and family draw their swords with mouths agape._) "We can't trust the goblins to not sell us back to those bastards." Jaina knows it is probably true, but she can hope that her magic has bought her time, or at least brought her some measure of comfort. Her friend and advisor is safe, and maybe _someone_ will hear of what has happened, and can make it as it should be.

She doesn't think of Thrall. She doesn't think about Thrall's thoughts when Aegwynn came upon his very doorstep as it were. She tries not to think of the Orc Chieftain at all. The peace between Durotar and Dustwallow Marsh is tentative without the strain of harboring fugitives of the Alliance. They will pass over Aegwynn.

It is she that they will string up as an example.

Jaina has not been an optimist since Stratholme. She will not allow herself the indulgence of hope in this moment. She may bleed to death from her punctured ankle. She might be handed over to the Stormwind forces, and tried for treason and conspiracy. She really doesn't know what to think. She hasn't been this confused and angry since the first time that Arthas turned against her and her own, as though they had not ever been friends. (Y_ou had loved him too, in your quiet and distracted way. You were too young to call it that, because only beautiful princesses and noble princes were allowed to have such an ending, and you didn't think either of you was completely ready to be any of those. You were especially afraid of the possibility_.)

When she thinks to open her eyes again, the marsh is waning into darkness, and she has not been awake at all to keep and eye out. It is the ending of summer, but she is still very cold suddenly, like chill lips across the back of her neck. She swallows her heart back down, and blinks with her little white fists, clenching and unclenching. She is pleased to find that she can move at all.

I do not want to die, she thinks. It sounds cliché even in the back of her mind, where her thoughts are still secret and quiet, but press hard against the backs of her eyes and write into her vision. Her ankle is grotesque and crackled with blood now, and she hasn't the presence of mind to look away. Instead, all she can think about is how very much she would like to sleep.

"You should wrap that. You'll bleed to death if you don't."

She hears this from a great distance, but it sounds like a whisper. If she strains her head towards the creaking of a nearby windmill, she might catch that little voice again. She might just be losing her mind. (_Your ankle gives a little throb, like a swallow_.)

"I'm not going to," she hears in that voice again. "Help you, that is. I don't help people. I help myself."

She can understand that. Jaina might have done the same thing were she not exactly what she is.

"But I might be able to find someone who will."

* * *

The immediate resistance that Thrall encounters in his own offices is as disheartening as the silence from the marsh, where Jaina may be waiting for him. (_This quickens your heart and wielding hand. You've always responded to fear like you were taught to._)

"I'd hardly consider this to be an appropriate use of the elite guard."

Thrall looks at Sylvanas' representative, and snorts. In his teetering and waifish way, the undead man is strong, quick minded and more than a little clever. But he is clever in that he seeks ways to cut, to wound. Even now, Thrall can feel the pits of that cadaverous face looking into him, like it would be as simple as reading a book. (_People write on themselves their stories, and your penmanship will always be sloppy and illegible next to that of your allies with thin fingers and grinning faces. Sometimes, you look at them and yourself and want to return to the Alterac mountains where you will not have to write your clumsy common letters._)

"I'd hardly consider your attitude to be respectful," he says, and frowns further. Thrall feels stretched in a way today, looking at Vol'jin and the others, that he has not felt since he first wore the black armor of Orgrim. He simply does not feel it within himself to stretch any further for patience.

The undead emissary does not seem to catch on. Thrall grinds his teeth, and curries Snowsong's white fur until he sees little else. He will let his friends do the looking for him if only for a brief time.

"It's not that I mean disrespect, Warchief, but that I do not understand why you expend your resources on a human," he says this with a sneer, that undead man and for a moment he finds himself wondering if the clattering bone creature does not too wish he was that, "that the Alliance has thrown out. What is a has-been next to our own welfare?"

"You forget you'self," says Vol'jin. "'De Horde recognizes 'de 'tings that Magna Jaina Proudmoore has done fer us, even if she ain' Orc, Darkspear, or anyt'ing else."

The undead man rattled against himself. Thrall likes to think that is what it sounds like when they are thinking. "At our expense then?" the man asks. "I would like to think that the Warchief and his own were taking care of Horde business, not meddling in our opponents politics any more than necessary."

Vol'jin rises to his full height, and Thrall thinks of trees and roots. The earth is not shy to the troll, and practically rolls its approval beneath the very stones of the room. "The earth knows it's own," Cairne Bloodhoof has once told him, their shamanism up against one another. (_You had felt very alive that night, and envious of the grace the large bullman had shown._) Thrall smiles from somewhere beneath his worry.

Vol'jin's scowls are hot, where his smiles and prayers are cold-hearted. This frown sears like hot metal, his tusks red and hot in the afternoon sunlight."You best be off, mon. 'De Warchief says we get Proudmoore, an' you get rid o' your sulky mood and find 'de sorceress. Way you go on, you'd be thinking you have ta find 'de lady you'self."

The undead man (_his name is Ralph Dartfall, you remind yourself, because even without eyes and fingernails, he is still one of your allies_) scowls and begins to mutter. "I didn't mean any offense by it, but it's still ridiculous with the..."

"Go," says Vol'jin, sturdy and ruddy colored. Rude. He has never been very sorry for much, and even Thrall thinks that might only be about simple things like what he drinks or whether or not he beds down at night. Vol'jin has never been sorry to say exactly what he means. "Don't be comin' back 'til I says so. Thrall be 'de Warchief. I be the Darkspear chieftain. Methinks I have 'de same rights to say as I want as yo' dark lady."

Dartfall leaves, and the few Darkspear that sit in the space with them practically gloat, hiding their own amusement under their tusks. Thrall would think it were hilarious, maybe irritating, were he not it such a hurry. But sometimes he forgets exactly what his allies are like, what they were before the Horde, and when he sees glances of it, it often disquiets him.

"You go too," says Vol'jin, hand on his shoulder. "I hold down 'de fort long 'nough fer old Dartfall and 'de blood elves. Can't take you long to find a woman who stands out like a kodo in 'de sands. Worst ya can do is try to find 'er by that hair of 'ers. Easy to see, that one."

Thrall, standing next to a force of fifty riders and their mounts, knows very well that Jaina is not so very hard to find. If she had been hard to find, he shudders to think how badly the battle on Mount Hyjal would have gone, or the number of times he could have killed her when he came for Admiral Proudmoore. He has always been careful to look for her. At his height in the world of rulers and peoples, he has had very little else to look at.

He thinks for a moment of the stone that now sits in his room, cold and unused. It has been many months since last he saw the sorceress face to face. She would likely say the same things now that she would have said then on the top of Razor Hill. Which is to say that rather than take anything serious in the first few moments, she would laugh at his goblin zeppelin.

"The Warchief and his dirigible!" she had once said with a laugh. If he had not been so confused why she found it funny, he would have thought to look at her smile for longer. They are not rare, but so often meaningless. She gives them out with such ease, such practiced grace as though they were paying her for it, that sometimes he wonders if she does not simply get torn between the space that lines her teeth and tongue. It looks painful when she lies with her smiles.

She is constant to a fault, unfailingly pleasant and strong-willed despite her heart-shaped mouth and gentle presence. (_There was a time, not even long ago, maybe yesterday, that you thought of nothing but that and felt your throat wring itself like a fist._) But Jaina is the second woman of his acquaintance with a similar description, and that same swell of gold hair that makes something brand-hot inside of him plummet to his gut. ("_I've been fighting at least half as long as you," she had said and you had grunted, drawing comparisons that you know Jaina would resent or dislike. "You don't need to watch out for me like you did for __**her**__." The truth is, you're afraid to think about her outside of what you recall of Taretha for what that will make Jaina._)

"We ride to Dustwallow from the Barrens."

(_Someone important._)

* * *

I am cold and afraid.

This is the first thing that Jaina thinks, looking at the planks of wood above her, or what might have been them twenty years ago before the rot that the swamps bring into every house. The wood is warped and curved under neath the weight of the roof, and Jaina ignores the nagging memory of her mother for a moment, and her own twisted ankle that looked like that only a short while (_Days? Years?_) ago.

Jaina does not often admit when she is afraid, like it is a secret, and the only thing keeping her from being wholly human. Humans die, they all do as an inevitability much like everything else, but they die so much more easily. She has to be something more in order to be something for other people to believe in her. Rulers are not made out of people, out of mere humans, no matter what republic or scholar may say otherwise. Not the ones that truly count when it matters.

She takes a moment to gather herself up, to reach out with her nerves and make sense of where her arms have gotten to, if her feet are still there, if she still has a mouth to speak. (_You have had nightmares when you had none: Arthas wouldn't let you run away this time._) If nothing else, Jaina's hair is still a net around her head, matted and lukewarm on her forehead. The only thing about her that is truly missing is her armor. It makes her feel very naked.

She has pain, but not the sort that the body makes. She always will she suspects, like a wound that does not close properly. The mind is a much more fragile thing, and still she thinks of the place she called home just days ago and winces to herself. They will not give it back. For the first time, home is not something that remains behind, quiet and certain of her return.

"We vagrants make the most of ourselves," a sailor had said once, looking rawhide tough and sad. Jaina had never thought much of it, looking at his dirty shirt and unkempt beard. No matter what she said otherwise, she was still ruled by appearances, accents, courtly manners. But she had been weary, and more malleable than she normally would be.

He had a sorrowful look to him, and while she had felt bad, she had never properly understood why. "Kingdoms and provinces are fine and all, but they don't last. Never do when I needed one."

"Where then do you go home?" she had asked. (_You were as ignorant as a child then. You were always ignorant of people who were less fortunate than you until the very day that you were made to play nice with them and pretend your people had not taken advantage of their differences._)

He shrugged. "They all start to look the same after awhile. Same people, same feeling." He had lifted a box onto the deck then, his hands just as gnarled and twisted as the rope in his hands. She had thought to count the tendons in his wrist, number his freckles and sunspots like this was the measure of him and she could grab it. He was so very old, and like tree rings, maybe he could be understood though observation, deconstruction.

Their eyes had met somewhere in between a crease in his wrist and a long white scar down his forearm. His eyes had been so pale they were almost white and sorry. She didn't know what he had to be sorry for. "It's very lonely," he said, and spoke not a word else to anyone for the remainder of the voyage.

(_You think you might have surfaced something dead inside him, and he had been sorry to see it. If anyone, it was __**you**__ who felt sorry for asking in the first place._)

She draws herself back to her body, as though memory were some sort of journey, and she has left her skin behind.

Not more that two rooms, she thinks to herself, listening very intently. It's an old house, probably older than some of the original ones in Theramore. There had been humans in this region before her, just enough to remain hidden in their obscurity. Many of them had resented her family's intrusion and had withdrawn, leaving house skeletons and farm cadavers. The whitewash peeled off of them in the humidity, and she had scratched it off with her own fingers.

The room is also filled with crucibles and jars, alchemists' eggs and tinctures that she can't even name enough of to fill one hand. It is impressive that amidst all this moist decay, she can find anything new. The smell of the fresh mageroyal is enough to overwhelm her. It smells of ocean water and sweet meat.

She has to leave here, to find her own place to be alone for awhile. She recognizes the kindness these people meant to deal her. Maybe they even meant to restrain her and sell her to Stormwind like some calf. But she will leave nonetheless in better health than before. (_Never mind your legs are not responding, and your hands are too weak to even form a fist. You're just foolish enough to go anyway if you set your mind to it._) There's so much that she needs to sort through, never mind her health and her safety. She really doesn't have any of that to speak for anymore. Jaina's just as without resources and comfort as Thrall and the orcs had been when released.

She doesn't think she'll do half as well as they did. Her eyes already feel like they are being washed out until the color runs. It's seconds later that she realizes she feels this way because she is crying.

"You certainly have a lot to cry about," says a woman from the doorway. Jaina does not bother to look at them, but instead looks up into the boughs of the roof and feels herself stifled in the heat of the moisture. The woman continues to her quiet audience anyway. "More than most sorry men that make their way through here."

"I have very little to cry about," she says. "Or at least I could always have more. I have not suffered half of that which I know others have."

The woman, from her quiet distance, seems to smile. Jaina cannot be sure, but she thinks that she might feel it, and turns her head away from wilting mageroyal and to the figure in the doorway. An alchemist, a quietly pretty one, with ash colored hair and a wry smile. Jaina thinks that this must be what Aegwynn looked like before her magic began to wane, and very nearly laughs at the absurdity of the coincidence, or that she would even think of Aegwynn so indelicately. Aegwynn might be dead.

"Go to sleep, Magna Jaina." the pale woman says, and Jaina wants to break her porcelain face like plateware. She thinks the woman might know so. There is a mischievous tilt to the edge of her razor lips. "All those problems will be here tomorrow morning. Perhaps then you will have gathered your wits."

My wits are gone, she thinks, buried and dead like my father. She laughs again, and pretends that there was not a sob disguised beneath it. There's very little left to be gathered at all.

* * *

He finds her purely by chance, which is to say that he doesn't find her at all but is given her location by a passing apothecary apprentice in Mudsprocket, buying silverleaf and alchemist eggs from a engineer. The young man grumbles and moans at the steep price the goblins offer him, and offers his master's money up.

"Just as well that it's not for me," he says, and Thrall's throat tightens with concentration and anxiety. "Light knows why, and I do mean Light knows why that Mistress would decide to heal anyone that hasn't done anything for her. I have been her apprentice for nigh three years now and I'm still the one running off to get the reagents while she sips her earthroot and eksir berry tisanes and _why_ doesn't she send _him_ instead of me for once..."

He cuts him off with a hand to the shoulder. The thin apothecary very nearly jumps from his skin in fright, and drops a alchemist egg for his troubles. It seems very noisy, even amidst the whistles and creaks of the surrounding area.

"By the hounds of Sargeras, if that egg did not cost me a whole fifty silver! I don't know what Mistress Tabetha will have to say of it, but I am sure whatever it is of, there will be a lot of it and..." He turns, red face and pinched in the face. Thrall would have laughed at such a man if he did not recognize him a mage, even now feels the need to laugh. He has spent many years at the hand of humans, and with the shoe on the other foot (_as Drek'Thar has become fond of saying_), he sometimes feels the need to make a point of it. It is petty, yes, but it feels like it might make up for something, somehow.

The apprentice makes a noise of surprise, and sucks it back up just as quickly. Thrall wonders if the boy has ever even seen an orc before.

"My apologies," he says, and nods to the young man. "That's quite a lot of supplies to make salves and potions."

The young man, previously frightened, warms to the subject of his ire again. One of the others in his escort stifles a laugh, and even Thrall must wonder at the change in subject, or if the lad even knows who he is talking to. "Oh yes, it certainly is for just one person to carry. But Mistress Tabetha will always have her way and her reagents. We've had more use of them in the last day than we have in several weeks."

"Is someone injured?" he asks, and tries not to feel overeager. He feels it show on his face regardless.

For all of his complaints and noisiness, the apprentice alchemist quickly becomes very quiet, measuring with his pale human eyes. (_You would have hated him and his eyes just years before, so chill and colorless, just like what you expect of your people's captors._)

"I do not see how it is any of your business," he says shortly, gathering his parcels up to himself, now ignoring the glass shards of his alchemist egg. "The Marsh is tough on it's inhabitants. It is bound to try and end someone's life every once in a while. Even those who know it best."

"You mean Lady Proudmoore," he finally says, the words bursting out before he can think on them, make a plan. His hasty nature has always gotten the better of him. Seeing the young man startle and make to leave in a hurry, Thrall shakes his head. "Allow me to explain, or pretend that I can. It is important that I find Jaina Proudmoore before she is harmed."

"You have said quite a bit, sir," the apprentice says, voice light.

"I will say more yet, right here in necessary to make you see that I am serious."

The young man frowns, and looks him over. "It is not for me to say whether or not you come to see our visitor. I will not say who they are one way or the other. I will not tell you if they are well or not, or even if they're hair is brown or blonde. I am no fool to make myself so open to ridicule or punishment."

Thrall sighs. He is more patient than he was in his misspent youth, more aware of the different sorts of people there are. He understands the desire to live, but at the expense of others always leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. Sometimes, it reminds him of the arena, of the men and animals he killed. Thrall thinks he hears them in the spirits every once in a while. They are a reminder.

"Then let me look for myself." says Thrall. "You are wise to stay uninvolved, even if I feel that it is the coward's way."

"Cowards live," the young man says, and walks to the north.

* * *

"_Of course it will have to end someday," her mother says. "Empires always fall when least expected, and to tragic results. That is simply a part of our people's existence, our bane and our salvation. We are the most flexible and adaptable of the creatures in Azeroth, and we have much to thank for that."_

_Her mother has soft hands in this memory, the kind that people who sleep do, with porous skin and shell fingernails. They tear and chip easily, which makes her far more careful when attending to them, holding them, doing as her mother would like. Despite the fever that makes her as fragile as cooling glass, she is still lovely and Jaina envies her grace. (_Perhaps cooling glass is too close to home for now, though. Much like when the flame is taken too quickly from the glass, you suspect that when the fever leaves her, it will be the end of her and her perfect grace._) _

_Moira is her name, when Jaina bothers to recall her as something else other than mother and Lady Proudmoore. She is white blonde and green eyed, long legged and perhaps too thin for what is given her. She comes from the north, from Stratholme and the cold stone bowers that remind her later of corpses. But Stratholme had been beautiful in those days, and she did not recall her mother in foreboding as she would when the woman's hollow bones seemed to have more meaning._

_The bed Lady Moira lies in now is too plush, and she sinks into the comforters and pillows until there is very little left to see of her other than a face and the arm that Jaina holds in her own. _

"_Change is an inevitability for us," says her whisper. "We should be glad of what it can mean."_

_Looking at her daughter, and looking at her own hands, that had once been full and beautiful, her mother had sighed in her withdrawn way, squeezing her daughter's hands like an anchor would the shore. _

"_I am still yet afraid of it." _

_Moira, Jaina recalls in her early adulthood, not back then but not quite now either, means 'bitter' in the old language of Stratholme. _

* * *

It does not take long this time for Jaina to orient herself to her surroundings, to frown and push herself against the headboard that is more like a tombstone than the oily wood of the marsh. Them craft of her people in Dustwallow is simple, clean, and necessary, whereas this impressive piece of mahogany looms over her quietly. She wonders with a smile whether or not the alchemist mistress means to crush her.

It is late in the evening, the sunlight a greasy orange against the whitewash and windowsills. The mageroyal blooms nod sleepily like her own head, and close their petals into themselves. Jaina is fine with that. It means that she has been alive long enough to survive a full two days passing. She is content to know that she has done better than others had in the past while fugitives of the state. It shall be like a game, she thinks. I wonder if I will win.

But this time, unlike the last, someone is immediately ready for her to awake, sitting quietly in a wicker chair near the foot of the mahogany bed. A man, surely not out of his early twenties. She would have said he looked like a child, were she not very nearly his own age just a few years before. Jaina has done far more than this man has ever had to, but she is still young, naïve to a certain extent. "You will learn that optimism is rather like a lie. Do not get into the habit of it.," Aegwynn says, in some recent memory. Jaina smiles.

This is surely the alchemist's apprentice,tattered and tired like she remembers in her days as a novice. He sleeps in the sunlight, which is gentle and quiet in a way that she has not felt since she was very small. She would sleep again, she would roll over now were she not concerned that she had overstayed her welcome. The lady alchemist did not seem kindly, or giving. Jaina wonders what she could want for this.

She does not get the chance to ask, because from the other room she hears the rustiness of her voice and another far deeper, like the rumbling of rocks. Thunder, clouds, this is what she thinks of, and without any doubt in her mind, she knows that it is Thrall. The certainty in her mind feels ridiculous in the face of her infirmity, but she dares to allow herself the leisure of hoping it is anyway.

The apprentice stirs, weary and looks at her in a dusty way that makes her think of Antonidas and books. "I had thought you were to sleep for at least another hour or so," he whispers, risking glances at the rickety door between them and the voices. "Mistress Tabetha dishes out sleeping draughts like mages water when patients are troublesome."

"Forgive me any inconvenience," she says, and realizes that she means it. "I did not mean to bring any trouble to you or your mistress. I am grateful that you brought me here all the same."

"It wasn't me of course," he says stiffly. "I don't harbor fugitives, Lady Proudmoore, and if asked, I will act as if you were never here at all. Give credit where credit is due, and thank a particular goblin in Mudsprocket."

Jaina lifts herself gingerly to sit up, to let the sun hit the side of her face and cast her into bronze. It is blinding in her left eye, the sick light that comes from the sky and from the black dragonflight's smoke. She thought she had grown used to it, but Theramore was not nearly as close as this house was. It was hard to imagine what living would be like on Onyxia's doorstep.

"A goblin?" she asks, looking outside. It is not that she can see anything, but a distraction. "I thought for certain they would turn me in for my no doubt sizeable bounty."

"You are wanted dead, Lady Proudmoore. A discreet sort of dead that does not get out to the people at large or Orgrimmar. Unfortunately for them, it appears that not only have the orcs heard of it, but so have the Mistress and a Mister Jimson Hollowiron. A quiet sort, for goblins that is."

She swallows, and pretends it is the light that makes her eyes water. She is not upset that she is wanted dead. Her very best friend had tried to kill her before. She had been in the clutches of the legion time and again. She constantly stood between a blood feud of two equally stubborn peoples. Jaina was used to being wanted dead.

Grateful, however, was another matter entirely. The word came with a tight throat. She did not think she could tell anyone so.

* * *

Continued.

* * *

A/N: If you spot any errors, even game technicalities, feel free to tell me if you feel they detract from the text. As always, feedback is welcome in all forms.


	3. before closing them

Title: Gallows Humour (3/4)

Author:tsubaki-hana

Series: Warcraft

Rating: T

Disclaimer: Warcraft belongs to Blizzard Entertainment.

Summary: When it was calmer, the bleeding stopped. (Jaina is no longer welcomed by the Alliance. Thrall/Jaina.)

* * *

3

They offer salt-waves of the sea,

and you give them spume.

You whisper: 'They're filling the world with me now,

and for you I'm still a hollow way in the heart!'

* * *

He finds her looking very pale and quiet in a swath of linen sheets and old bandages, like the person changing them could not be bothered to throw them away. From what he understands of Tabetha, he is not surprised to find that this is so. She is a hasty woman, with tight lines all around her. She flits between spaces, afraid to spend too much time lingering in any one area. Her hands smell of copper and lemon, and her smile is one that is too hurried to be in earnest.

Pulling on one of the ravelled ends of a bandage, Thrall means to look into Jaina's eyes, but instead finds himself staring at the skin between her cheekbone and her dusty mouth. She must be tired, because she does not feign to smile for him like she might have at home. (_You know what it feels like, that first time that you are completely cut off from that word, traveling the forests and looking for others like yourself. That had been before Grom, but after Blackmoore, and the arena whip still stung your shoulders_.)

Jaina is rose and red in the dying sunlight. He doesn't look at her hair. It feels like it might sting like the whip had in some way.

"I had hoped it was you," she says in a tiny voice that he has to strain to hear. "I am very nearly crazy, and had thought I had made you up inside my head."

"You certainly would have chosen someone else," he says, voice like the rumble of rocks. He is so heavy next to her unbearable lightness. He would pick her up and throw her further, and he is nearly certain she would not come down again, and for some reason this frightens him and quickens his heartbeat. "I am no hero in your human fairytales."

"But you did once like them," she says, with a soft smile that he knows is torn between sorrow and humor. "fairy tales that is. Even _she,_" this is spoken like a portent, and between the two of them, there is always only one that they speak of, "must have found you some. Hidden them in books, letters. It's very important to little girls in our culture. She likely even fancied you her hero at one time."

She shrugs, before he has time to respond he notices, like she is shaking the memory away from them. Thrall knows that Jaina does not like to be compared to Taretha, even obliquely. She will brush him off in this moment, act as if she did not imply it. Looking at the shrewdness of her face, the earnestness in it, he does not know if he could imagine Taretha anyway.

Hair is but hair. Jaina is a very different woman from Taretha, especially now.

"I am not a hero, Jaina." He repeats it, like it matters. His grieved hands are moss green and black between his fingers, dusty and washed out from the ride across the barrens. To be honest, he doesn't feel like much more than a well-armored clerk on the best of days. Now he feels dusted and hot like dry summer.

Jaina laughs in that way that makes his heart turn in his chest. It is not true joy, nor bitter and reedy as Sylvanas' are. (_You cringed the first time the undead elf had laughed; Sylvanas had meant to laugh in earnest, but it had scraped against the walls and your ears until you were very nearly numb. It had hurt her to see your disgust, in the way that does not cause wounds or draw blood, but the kind where one sees red behind their eyelids, raw. She does not laugh with you any longer._)

Jaina's laughs are always honest, if not her smiles.

But Jaina laughs at most everything anyway.

"I would have had you," she says.

Thrall looks to her, counting individual threads of hair that he can see in the twilight. Hot as filament.

"I think I would have chosen you anyway," she clarifies and lies back against the pillows until she has all but vanished into him. The dirty bandages stay on the surface, however, rust red and brown against the linen. Her shoulder peeking from the top of her cotton shift may be the only true white thing in the room.

His heart is wretched with love for her right now. He doesn't even know why.

* * *

"You will need briarthorn," says Tabetha. "Perhaps even a little bruiseweed. The medicine is not so very difficult to make as it is difficult to get the right plants to begin with. Briarthorn grows in the barrens, but bruiseweed is to the north, and further still in the Eastern Kingdoms. You will need use of your skills as a leader to see that fresh bruiseweed is had."

Jaina hears Thrall's assent, and very nearly pounds on the door in frustration.

She listens to them, from the otherside of the door, and pretends that it is not embarrassing to have a friend told your needs and be expected to attend to them. Thrall is warchief, leader of the orcs and Horde, hardly a nursemaid that can be told when to feed and walk her like a small child. Jaina is near death with shame, red faced and angrily swallowing around her fingers that she shoves in her mouth. She is crouched as best she can near the doorframe, but must stifle her pain with more pain, biting between the fragile joints that make up her thumb and pointer. She can hear the click of them against her teeth, and tastes salty flesh. It eases her embarrassment for but a moment.

Her ankle is a riot of color now, or at least from what she can see in the lamplight. It is very nearly morning now, and the night has turned cold and sour as the sea fog rolls in over the hills and into the fens and furrows that make up the swamp. She had slept until the wood began to creak with moisture, and she had knelt to vomit up whatever it was she had last eaten.

It's not fair, her mind supplies. And it's not and it is in it's own way. Jaina is used to a measure of suffering and bowing her head to others, just as she was taught to do in the face of hostility. It is what princesses and high borne ladies of the north are meant to do. "You are but a woman," her father had too often said, "and that is a difficult thing to overcome." Like it was an illness, an infirmity of the body. When he said that, she hated him and nodded like she understood.

Her father does not say that anymore. She sometimes pretends that she is glad for it.

She listens again, to the steps of Tabetha and the orc, counting like waltzes. They are both very careful walkers. Dancing around vipers as it were. Both have a great deal to lose in the face of each other. Jaina can understand it in the way she could understand Kael'thas and Arthas when they were near one another.

(_Don't think of Kael'thas, not now when your heart is bruised from rejection. Do not think of Arthas when you are alone and wanting someone to help you, just like your father expected you would need. It is a different sort of hurt from the kind you gave the high elf not so very long ago, and a different sort from the kind you suffered when you and Arthas no longer looked to each other, but it stings no less, and you do not want to think about how you made both feel the same_.)

You are spying at doors,she thinks to herself. She does not remember being so very petty since she was small, and she fit into the nook of her father's shoulder with ease, and when the talk behind the door was unrecognizable as words at all. Adults talked, but she did not think they ever said anything.

"You would be wise to leave without using the road. That silly zeppelin of the goblins is in order. I will get you as far as Mudsprocket, but after that, I will not risk the representative and his newly acquired militia coming to hear of me." Tabetha is muffled, but even from behind a wall of wood, Jaina thinks she sounds sorry to be so careful. But Jaina understands, and raises herself away from the door.

She's sorry that she was careful too. Maybe she'll learn to be more aggressive in taking what she wants. But all she really wants to do now is sleep and listen to Thrall from the other side of the thin walls, peeling paint away from the side tables with her eyes of fingers and claws.

* * *

It is still dark when Thrall wakes her, hand enveloping all of her shoulder. From the looks of it, she would think that it would crush her, that she would feel her collar bone splinter and break surface like her ankle did just a mere two days ago. (_How long they have been, filled with stretches of muscle and cloth._) With his blackened and hard fingernails, Jaina realizes she would have been horrified with fear only a few years ago at this. Humans are so easy to break.

But the touch is light and careful, cold fingered as is the way of the mornings in the marshes. He exerts no pressure at all, and what little he does causes his fingers to shake with withheld strength. He may very well be afraid. (_But that's ridiculous_.)

"We need to leave," she hears.

For some reason, she really doesn't want to. Her head is heavy on her pillow, and the planks that hold the down mattress up from the floor grind into her back with the force of her gravity, and above all else, Jaina knows that when she rises, it will be the last time that she wakes to the humid, cool air of Dustwallow. The marsh is her home, and Durotar is far enough away that she feels homesick before she even leaves.

What's more, she knows that as soon as word arrives to the Alliance leaders that she is defecting to the Horde's protection, she can never go back again. She doesn't have any friends that she thinks she will particularly miss, or obligations and promises left from the Kirin Tor or Lordaeron long since lost. But it is a sort of painful leaving all the same, giving up a lifetime in order to live.

She also wonders if it had been an easy decision for Stormwind to do this to her. Had it hurt to sign the papers to arrest her? Had they considered the people she had known since she was a child, who were faithful to the Kul Tiras line? Would they take care of the smaller settlements? Use magic eyes to watch them?

Had they known that they would essentially destroy everything that made her a Proudmoore?

She looks at Thrall's blue eyes, cautious and sapphire dark in the candlelight, and knows with certainty that it had been decided with ease. And only because they couldn't understand or agree with the (_Orc? Man?_) ruler in front of her. That seemed sadder for him than even her having to leave.

It didn't seem fair. She was having to run away all over again. (_You remember the time, early on, when Arthas had fallen. You think he might have done you a kindness at that time outside of Stratholme, sending you away as though he knew what would happen. He had been so handsome then, noble, and you wondered not even a year later if that had been the lie all the while_.)

"I know,"she says thickly, and hopes he understands.

* * *

Snowmane rides with an even jaunt, steady and white in the early morning sun. Thrall is glad of it. Jaina is weak, he is tired, and he must reach the border between the Barrens and Dustwallow before they can meet with the goblin zeppelin. His escort had been quick to speak with the goblins in Mudsprocket, and they had been doubly so with the promise of hefty amounts of gold.

The crown of Jaina's head has been insistent on the underside of his chin, her hair dry and scratchy from her illness. He does not begrudge her the discomfort. She truly cannot help it, and Thrall is confident, even though he does not expect it of her, that she will try to make this up to him, like friendships were measured in good deeds and words. He often wonders if most human relationships are like that.

She is always trying to do something for him, or had been before the defection. A mere thought of his voiced in council may find its way south to her ear, like that the pirates on the east shores were becoming troublesome, and she would be first on the line to remove them from his borders. "It was convenient for us all," she had said once, brushing the tops of her sleeves with her fingers, as though she would like to embrace herself. Make a shield of her arms between his wisdom and her kindness. In hindsight he knows that if it had come to light that she had done this for any other than the Alliance, she would have been held in question earlier than now.

Looking at her hand braced against Snowmane's raiment, he wonders if it is painful to disguise something as natural and essential as friendship.

"We had thought to put a garrison here," she says suddenly, raising her voice over the gentle drumming of the wolf's paws on the ground. "A small one anyway. The defectors in Theramore took the tower before the plan had ever gotten into motion. We wanted to keep a lookout on the inn that used to be up here."

"I had heard of such a plan," he says, suddenly curious of where she means to go with this. It would not be unlike Jaina to cover up her discomfort with trivial words. She had done it before, when trying to avoid what she really wanted to say.

She turns her head, and he can see the glint of one of her own pale eyes. "Had you? I had wondered...it didn't turn out the way it had supposed to have been. It was only meant to be a watch for the people who wanted to stick it out in the marsh. Somewhere to go if things went bad. I had given the Northwatch to the High Elves from across the sea."

Thrall scowls. "That I didn't know. My own people had tried to take advantage of the weakened defenses there despite my orders. The Tauren wanted to know whether or not the local tribe would be willing to come to the Horde. Had I known a neutral party was staying there, I would have made my feelings on it more clear." He pauses. "But why High Elves?"

"They...are not welcome in their homeland anymore. They would not follow Kael'thas and the Farstriders into their vengeance against the Scourge." Jaina's hand is a tiny fist against the saddle. Thrall tightens his own in the reins. The purpose of the conversation is just beneath the surface, and he skimming the water's top. Ahead of him, the greasy trees grow sparser, and the grasses taller. He already feels himself becoming free again.

"Kael'thas is not welcome in his own home anymore either. I had not known the Blood Elves would not take their own back."

Jaina sighs. ( _She always sounds tired when she sighs, and you wish to sigh with her, to breathe away that ache that you feel as well_.) "The vengeance for the Sunwell remains, and the High Elves do not wish a part in it. Their cousins in Silvermoon use arcane magics that are harmful to others. Pulling the magic from someone for your own thirst is quite beyond my own imagining. Something I might expect of the lich Kel'Thuzad of Old Dalaran, but hardly of Anasterian's kin."

"And Stormwind? The Arathorian alliance? Why do they not help their old ally?"

"They would if they were not so preoccupied with themselves." She snorts. Another of Aegwynn's habits. "The Forsaken have been trying to take Arathi for awhile now, and they cannot spare the time for another of Arthas' conquests. They turned instead to the aeries of the Hinterland dwarves, and those who did not I came to instead. No matter how twisted some have become, many of the High Elves were tutors and friends of mine before the Legion came down on Dalaran."

"So you are protecting them from being neglected?" he asks.

She shakes her head, and it tickles the skin of his neck that is not covered in plate and leather. "I had thought to protect them from being abused. Strangers in a strange land they would be were they to go to Stormwind .Any human province for that matter. Like it had been_ they _that had betrayed the human alliance."

He has a sudden insight. A thought. "Do you believe you will be disabused by the Horde? That you will be treated as your High Elves would have been?"By the look on the side of her face, that flinch around the corner of her eyes, he knows he has reached into the undercurrent of her talk. He regrets it all the same. Her face looks laid bare now, and it is a pitiful thing.

She hesitates. "I...do not expect to be what the Darkspear are to the Horde. Nor the Tauren. And I know fully that the Forsaken will think of me hatefully."

"Why is that?"

"I survived." She says.

(_She survived, you know, an era where the north of the world was Prince Arthas Menethil's to destroy. How many of Sylvanas' people were once of the old sea kingdom of Kul Tiras, you could not say, but you know those who are will not be so forgiving. "She is breathing!" you hear your representative say, Ralph Dartfal just as pale and hateful as he was a few days ago. "She is breathing and I never will again, and she had only stood feet away, safe by the caprice of that dark prince! I am dead and she is not!"_)

"Seems cruel, doesn't it?"she says. Thrall can only see the left side of her mouth, and she has twisted it as best she can into a smile. That frustrates him more than his inability to make this moment right. (_Like you could just change it as you wish. According to the Bronze Dragonflight, with enough will and ambition, you could. You are both glad and angry that you lack that._) "They probably might have called me princess a decade ago, or made my dress for my fifteenth birthday. I cannot hate them for what they are, because they certainly did not choose to be, and are every bit as smart as I. Isn't it funny that I am afraid of them but they are not of me? Arthas and I were supposed to be their future kingdoms, and we did nothing other than ruin it for all of them."

"The fact that you understand that much is more than most people ever will." Swallowing, feeling the tiny scratchings of the hair again that work its way into the cracks between his armor, Thrall smiles. (_Your smiles are much smaller, much tighter because you can still remember Blackmoore telling you that you looked ugly when you did._) " I will make this right for you, as you have done more for our peace in this last week than I could hope to. For me, who has done even less as an individual than as a leader."

This time she does turn to look at you. Her profile was always very delicate, and with the circles underneath her eyes, the chapping of her lips, and her bruised nose, she looks particularly old and kindly. Thrall thinks that suffering makes her beautiful, and this makes his heart give another squeeze that he feels too often.

"I hope you rule the world someday, Thrall," she says.

"I don't."

* * *

Neither of them understand why she is weeping.

She, least of all, understands. She cannot say that she particularly is afraid of heights, even though the dirigible is particularly high off the ground, sweeping away from the swamps and into the arid dryness of the plains. Neither is it that she is too sick to stay awake for so long, or that her people will miss her now that she is called a traitor. (_You danced around that too long for it to count anymore. To be honest, you should have expected it sooner._)

But she cries anyway, and curls up next to a discomfited Snowmane who is sick in the air, and watches the rocky pass between her previous home and her new one drift away.

She is grateful that Thrall says nothing. He instead crouches next to her and tries to untangle her hair from around her ears and neck, pulling the knots that his armor made out of it. Jaina is surprised to note that not once does it pull hurtfully.

"I can be careful," he snorts, and pats Snowmane's head. She believes him, and curls her small fingers around two of his. (_You can't hold anymore than that._) She feels a fool for heaving air around her lungs, snot trying to run down her face, her face as red and ripe as a tomato. She laughs anyway.

* * *

He does not remember the last time he felt this sick. For that matter, he does not recall a time that he was anywhere as nervous as he is now, except for perhaps when he had first met Grom, and did not even know what to expect of other orcs. Coltish, Grom called him at one point, and laughed in his gruff and endearing way. (_For someone so thin and angry from hunger and exhaustion, your heart went out to the orc cheiftain often, and even now quietly beats in your chest in memory._)

The gates to Orgrimmar are the gates to home, as they have always been, and he can see the sentries talking to each other now, smiling and waving. He is used to warm welcomes, invitations for lamb's roast, well wishes towards his health. He is hardly ever unaware of how essential he is to the lives of his citizens, and while he enjoys the comraderie, the dependence frightens him, and he feels his relative youth again. These are the days that he pens letters to Drek'Thar, that are hardly ever sent in the post at all.

But this time is different. This time he holds Jaina, asleep, head tucked over his shoulder, waist carefully balanced on his arm. In another culture, he would be twice as embarassed. The orcish and troll people will not recognize the traditional bridal hold that the humans would. He blames his upbringing for a moment that he should feel this ridiculous at all.

For another moment, almost humorously, he is pleased that Jaina is not awake for all of this. Thrall is certain that she would try to walk just to save face in front of the people of Orgrimmar. Perhaps it is for the best, though. If nothing else, it will show that Thrall is in control, even if he does feel ridiculous and awkward with a woman less than half his weight tucked up into his armor.

With a sigh of relief, he spots Vol'jin, smiling like the devil as it were. But Vol'jin would smile even if he was angry if he felt it would throw someone off. Straightforward in opinions, never in mood. The Darkspear chieftain pats his uninhabited shoulder and bows.

"'Dey were wonderin' what took ya so long, Thrall. Had it up ter'my tusks wit' all o' those questions Sylvanas and Cairne were asking."

"Questions?" he asks.

"Sticking 'der nose where it don' belong. Wanted 'ter know where 'de Warchief had gotten off to. And Ol' Vol'jin says Thrall goes where he pleases, wit' out no noses. Cairn laughed o' course."

Thrall is glad of that, even if in a day or two he will have to apologize to Sylvanas, and answer her in earnest. Where Cairne may have accepted silence, Sylvanas is craftier, more discerning about deceit and secrets. She is nothing but her old self at heart, a general, second borne and ruthless with her need to be acknowledged, especially now that she is not what she once was. (_Sometimes, when you listen to her, you can almost feel her hatred rolling off her, when the earth quails away from her, and you, knowing why, feel pity. You think she hates that even more._)

"'Dat be Proudmoore on 'yer shoulder I see." Vol'jin's smile drops, but neither does he frown. With the sun in his hair and his eyes, he looks down at the sleeping woman. Thrall thinks of fire spirits, and of the bright flame on Durnholde when he escaped. For one irrational moment, he wonders if he won't try and burn her out.

But he doesn't, at least not in the way Thrall expects. He takes one of his great fingers and presses against the brittle hair and watches the dull heartbeat on her neck. He must see something in her face then, because he frowns and twists it back into a smile.

"You'll have 'ter forgive me, Thrall. I am old enough to remember most o' de humans my clansmen kept. I've seen 'der blood on our tusks before. It's hard fo' me to understand 'dis one doesn't resent us fo' that." He looks back at the gates, to the two curious faces of the sentries. "I still only half believe it."

"I'm old enough to have killed them myself," Thrall says. "And I still don't understand why she doesn't resent me for it either."

They walk now, through the city as calmly and unobtrusive as possible. It is hard to do with a troop of guards and Vol'jin's own officers, but they manage well enough. The cool smell of the Drag relieves him in some way, makes the tension leave his neck. He hopes Jaina can feel that way someday about Orgrimmar.

Many still watch, look into their faces with a mixture of confusion and bitterness. He cannot wholly fault them for it. ( Y_ou felt the whip too, you want to tell them, that you have not betrayed them, you __**remember.**_) Thrall knows that he will have to work hard to make good on his promise to Jaina. He would not see her treated badly after working so hard for them in the past. (_Strangers in a strange land, she said._)

"You'd best be thinkin' how to make this right, Thrall," warns Vol'jin from his side. " 'De Horde love you best, and respect ya as well as 'dey can. But even they will remember 'de camps, and 'de campaigns. Warchief or not, 'dere's only so much that a person will keep 'dere head out of."

Thrall knows it. Jaina knew it from the beginning. He thinks that may be the reason that he himself sometimes holds back from her. It doesn't seem fair that he has to at all.

"Don't be bringin' 'de girl here to meet anotha' sort o' execution. The death o' 'de body is gentler than 'de death o' 'der spirit."

* * *

Continued.

* * *


	4. patched invisibly patched away

Title: Gallows Humour (4/4)

Author: tsubaki-hana

Series: Warcraft

Rating: T

Disclaimer: Warcraft belongs to Blizzard Entertainment.

Summary: When it was quieter, the bleeding stopped. (Jaina is no longer welcome by the Alliance. ThrallJaina.)

- - - - -

- - - - -

4

You say: 'Lay the leaf-work of years by you, it's time,

that you came here and kissed me.

The leaf-work of years is brown, your hair is not brown.

- - - - -

For the first couple of days, she continues to sleep. Jaina does not particularly want to wake up. The linen sheets from Mulgore are softer than the ones she had in Theramore, made by large and careful hands. In the few times that she does wake, she wonders at the three-fingered hands of the tauren, and how delicately they must push on the strings, handle their weaving tools like glass.

They have beautiful hands, she decides, and remembers Cairne's ginger hold on her own in the past. Where Thrall had been afraid of breaking her hands back in their earliest days, the old tauren was simply gentle in his innermost nature. She had watched his braids sway and the soft coat of his fur in the heat of battle, and had envied his softness in the face of hard, pressing violence. He had dark eyes, the color of moist earth, where Thrall's own were the color of glass, or sky. Sometimes, she wasn't sure how to define them.

"You are a very strange man," she says instead, the next time that he is released from his duties. She knows he ought to be eating his supper, or resting, or perhaps just playing at bones with his fellows, but instead finds him sitting at her bedside, looking quietly at the terra cotta of the walls, running his gaze over the arches of the bone and wood beams. Not looking for flaws, just looking.  
He laughs. "So I hear," Thrall says, and stretches his arms over his head. To any other, this would be intimidating. He is a very big figure, and with his arms out and above him, he gains heights and strength unthought of before. Jaina instead sees his youth, his nervousness that she didn't recognize in Arthas when they had been together. Thrall was wholly more modest, more humble in his presentation. He did not hide his unease, or at least not very well.

Jaina swallows. It is endearing to even consider.

She smiles. "Shouldn't you join your clansmen or your fellows? I was under the impression that orcs ate a big meal on the last day of the week, to celebrate their successes and trials. They're hardly going to be pleased if you're not with them."

"I rarely am," he says, and she knows he's being honest. "I'm afraid the Warchief doesn't have much time for that sort of thing. Besides," he says with a grin, "I have visitors to play host for. Can't let them go with a bad impression of my city."

Jaina laughs, but it feels a little dry in the face of Thrall's obvious warmth. "I hardly mean to be a guest, Thrall. For that matter, I would hope you would treat me like everyone else in the Horde. You needn't play court with a woman who has nothing to show for it."

Thrall sighs, and Jaina feels a weight in it, like his breath fell from the air to sit clumsily at their feet. She has brought up something important, and now they will have to look that fact in the face, even as her ankle sits bandaged and her heart throbs weakly for the smell of the ocean and arcane. (_It beats in the base of your throat, and you cannot swallow around it. You feel it for it's pain, and for him, who you know cannot understand why you would. He's important like it, to an extent that even you aren't __sure of yet._)

"To treat you like everyone else would be a lie, and I despise pretense," he says, and begins to pace at the side of the bed, scuffing his feet against the stone floor with his plate boots. She's familiar with the motion; her father did a similar thing, as did Arthas. Sometimes, despite his race and appearance, Thrall is every bit like a human male.

"That," he says, "and I may or may not want to treat you like everyone else. I have set you apart from the rest, the minute I rode into Dustwallow I did, and I have to follow that through as a leader and as an orc. By my honor, Lady Jaina."

She leans back into the pillows, a little puzzled. "If you insist, Warchief Thrall," she says. "But the sooner that I am a part of this world, the better. You can only set me apart for so long before I am not a part of anything."

"You do not want to be by yourself," he says with a nod. He is thinking, and she wonders what of.

"No," she says, and looks to the large oval window that lets the evening into her room with all its tastes and colors. There are more linens there, cloths swathed over the top in reds and browns, and out there some tauren woman is carefully holding her cloth combs and thinking of dyes and pigments that she can use to make something lovely, and Jaina doesn't know if she will ever have that. In some way, she envies this idea, a possible person who makes simple and useful things, and never need for a purpose. (_And you have canonized this figure, and not always in this form. You have wanted simplicity since you were a adolescent coming into the first flushes of noble life, and again as a leader. Your idea of happiness does not always look the same, and sometimes you think that's probably for the best. It means you are changing as a person._)

"I don't want to be by myself," she says.

- - - - -

The news of Jaina Proudmoore setting up residence in Orgrimmar spreads like wildfire across the continent of Kalimdor. His own people, at first shocked, settle into the idea in a way that even he is surprised by. They frowned at him in the first couple of days, and his advisors were in his ear like bees droning, but it did not hurt the way that he thought it might hurt.

"I don't know which is stupider, you saving Jaina Proudmoore from imminent execution, or the fact that you brought her back to live with you," Drek'thar had written, in his assistant's stilted hand. (_You often wonder what Drek'thar's writing would have been like had he been able to see and learn. Thick, you think, well worn in and stone like. Something reassuring and sturdy in the face of his own human handwriting._) "In any case," the letter continued, "it was an honorable thing to do, and I will not chastise you for something you felt was the right path."

Thrall had been so pleased with that response, he had actually shown it to Jaina, who had been quiet and uncomfortable thus far in the rooms he had assigned her. She had read and smiled, like she always did, but she laughed and called the elder shaman a 'practical old goat, albeit a forgiving one.' He knew she meant no insult by it, only a sort of affection.

Jaina herself had raised doubts in him. And where Jaina brought in doubts, so did his allies and opponents, who needled him, and blooded him in their criticisms.

He sits now, writing his correspondence, looking down at the piles and piles of letters written by Horde and Alliance alike, some angry and others simply curious. They come in spidery and bold scripts, with wax house seals and hastily wrapped twines. He notes with some amusement that Regent Lor'themar of Silvermoon has had the edges of his paper dyed red and green, and Sylvanas' smells of the apothecary, of wormwood and sulfur. (_You think it rather sad that she cannot smell it herself, no matter how very much like her it is._)

Ironically, he thinks around a wry smirk, each one says the same thing. "Why did you do it? Why did you make such a reckless decision?" He wonders if all people are so single-minded, or if what he had done really was that uncalled for.

Thrall does not doubt himself the way that he did when he first became Warchief. To doubt is to allow weakness, to make others think that you are nervous or inexperienced. He is a military and social leader, and of all the people that fall under his banner, it is he that must appear the most solid. It is his duty to bring comfort by his resoluteness, even when he is tired or lonely or afraid. (_And you are afraid, more often than you'd ever admit._) If he is truly in need of another to lean against, it is done quietly and in confidence.

These letters, no matter how they are phrased, are in ways very cold and critical. They dart beneath the breastplate to draw blood, and need no sharpened edges to do it. He is familiar with the art of words and meaning, even if he is not fluent in all of its forms. He understands the intent, if not the phrasing.

The truth is that he doesn't care.

It is foolish, when he really thinks about it, to get involved in foreign politics because of a feeling of honor. Honor is integral to all orcs, but there is a time and place, and he does not always follow the protocol in such matters. Perhaps it is his youth showing, and how he cannot willingly admit in front of any others than Cairne and Vol'jin that he is less than three decades old. (_It is a silly fear, but you cannot shake that if they knew how young you really were, they would not care about your stability or good politics. You would be a child to them, no matter your power and experience._)

But he doesn't care. Despite all that could go wrong because of his friendship and his haste, he knows in his being that he is right and everyone else is wrong in this. There is no evil in saving someone, especially someone who has been nothing but straightforward and kind to him in ways that even many of his own had not. He cannot say the same of many, and those he can are mostly dead.

"Nothing but fear-driven nonsense," he says, and from across the room, Vol'jin smiles toothily.

The troll shuffles his own leather maps and wooden armor. "I was wonderin' when you'd say somethin' 'bout de letters. You seem to have a lot of 'dem."

Thrall grumbles and twists in his seat. He knows that this is his place, but at times, he detests it, like Grommash Hold is a prison holding him inside and safe. "I needed to make a decision," he says, and nods, like affirming something. He feels better having done it.

"Good o' ya to do 'dat," Vol'jin says. "She be lookin' to you ta make a decision. Methinks Proudmoore isn' sure what ya want done now. Jes' restin' and readin' where she can. Actually sent Ol' Vol'jin here a letter askin' about how we trolls learned the orc language so fast."

He shrugs a little sheepishly. "She wants to integrate into the Horde."

"And dat's smart," Vol'jin says sharply. Thrall looks up to see the troll patriarch looking at him carefully. "Ya needn' look so lost when she does. Proudmoore be smart enough ta know that even with your political immunity coverin' her, she gonna need ta do somethin' fo' herself. What's more, whatever she does will be unda' you or she'll not last long. I like ta think 'de people are betta' dan dat, but she still be a pinkskin, a living, breathing piece o' de monarchy 'dat be holdin' onta' our people fer centuries. Don' matter what she done fer us."

At this, Thrall sighs. It is true, no matter how much he likes to glaze over the fact, and that no matter how forgiving he is, he cannot say the same for the rest of the Horde. Where he is willing for tolerance, the rest just as soon assume Jaina be quartered and executed by the blade, like her father had done to them.

"Now don' be makin' dat face," Vol'jin says, and gives him a hard slap on the back. "Dere's too much to be done, and not enough time fer you thinkin' ya did de wrong thing."

"I do not **ever** think I do the wrong thing," he says. "I cannot afford to think it. I will not think it. And you, Master Shadow Hunter, should know that."

"Aye," says the troll, drawling off with a smile. "But ye should always remind 'dem, shouldn't ya?"

The mail is done quickly. Thrall is too irritated with all this questioning to even bother worrying about what he wants done in the aftermath. Vol'jin helps in the ways that he can, and smiling like a crocodile. (_You suspect that he is relieved to hear your own sincerity, like it had been in question even with him. If __you tell the truth, a few hours before, you were not sure either._)

- - - - -

Orgrimmar is not at all like Theramore, or Lordaeron, or any other capital city that Jaina has lived in during her twenty-something years alive. In some ways, she likes it better than those she had spent years in.

Everything tastes of dust and spice on the tongue while in Orgrimmar, and smells of sweat and rain. Everyone dresses practically, but brightly. The orcs favor leather and it's simple comfort, and the tauren enjoy the woven robes of their homes (_this word makes you twitch_). The trolls, she finds, are her favorites, as bright and interesting as the jungle flowers that had been a part of their native land. She also finds that they are less than kind on first meeting, but fast friends when she laughs at their jokes, and doesn't think less of them for spitting on the sidewalks. (_If anything, you think it is charmingly fitting, and you can see the relief in Thrall's face the first time that you and Vol'jin crack grins at each other._)

Jaina has not had previous time to experience this, much less enjoy it for herself since the city's founding some three years ago. There had never been time for her to visit, though there had been numerous invites from the Warchief (_all refused, because you could not return the favor with any __certainty and that makes you guilty_). She drinks it in now with greed, and resents the sentry at her back for only a moment, because it is not Taka's fault that she must be watched.

Her ankle twinges, and she smiles instead. Taka is a very observant keeper, and she will return them to Grommash Hold if she suspects Jaina is in anything but perfect health and comfort. The younger orcess takes orders very well, even if Jaina is a human, and the pink of her skin makes Taka nervous with memory.

Truth be told, Taka makes her nervous too. She cannot forget a lifetime of teaching so quickly, and the curve of the orcess' neck and the slope of her tusks raise warnings in Jaina that she cannot suppress. (_This girl-orc is not Thrall, and he is the one that is okay._)

Aegwynn, next to her, sighs and wipes her forehead in the humidity. Much like Jaina and her broken ankle, Aegwynn sits firmly ensconced in a reclining chair, arm bound and wrapped to her chest so that she would not jar it and rip the healing skin.

"I'm too old to be babysat," the elder sorceress mumbles, mutinously. "I'd like nothing more than to tell your Warchief where to stick his head other than in my business. 'For quick healing', my ass." With her good arm, Aegwynn twists a piece of white hair like wool twine, albeit far more violently. Jaina hides her amusement with a quick glance over to Taka, who obviously enjoys Aegwynn's complaining. She suspects that Taka was in charge of Aegwynn before she got there as well, because the two have an easy camaraderie that she envies.

"Sorceress Aegwynn must rest," says Taka, roughly, and Jaina is charmed by the orc woman's attempts to twist her mouth around the human words. She speaks well, but often is unhappy with how it sounds, and scrunches up her nose like she has tasted something bad no matter how much Jaina and Aegwynn tell her otherwise. (_Sometimes you wonder if she scrunches up her nose because of a bad taste that the words themselves leave. Taka is a child of the Second War, and she better than most remembers the internment camps and the language she had to learn in order to know when or when not she was at risk. As a person who thinks Common speech is beautiful, you find this upsetting, and try not to think about it too much, as though ignoring it would make it better._)

"You _would_ want me to rest like an old woman!" Aegwynn balks, but there is a grin hidden somewhere beneath the indignation. "I think you'd tie me down to the chair just as well as my arm is if you thought it would make your day easier."

"I would, old woman," the orcess says, and Jaina laughs in earnest.

"If only I had thought of it while you were active chamberlain," Jaina says with a grin, and shuffles in her airy cloth dress. Beneath, it chafes her bandages, and she thinks of running in the swamps again. She wonders if Aegwynn ever gets this phantom thought, or if she is still young enough to feel more thoroughly. (_She has told you more than once that experience is for the young to gain, and for the old __to forget. You wish you were in a position to do the same. Sometimes, you feel stretched over a short number of years that are very full._)

Aegwynn, for all her brass and noise, looks a little sorry when she turns to her. "Well you did ask for me, and got all that I come with. Not as much as it used to be, but it does me good."

The white bandages on Aegwynn's arm are especially strange in the growing twilight, more orange and red like embers than actual cloth. They are careful and tight against her body, and beneath them, Jaina knows the veins and scars that make a part of Aegwynn. She has several similar ones, left from rituals and tumbles that she can't even count anymore. Sometimes it is easy to forget that Aegwynn is hundreds of years old, and perhaps not as fit and powerful as she had been. (_And she had been powerful, you know, to the point where you had envied more than revered her, and it took years of careful unlearning to stop that. It felt wrong, envying, like a troublesome snake sitting between the two of you, and Aegwynn confused by it. You bit and spat at her, even while begging her presence. What does that say about you?_)

"I like you just the way you are," says Jaina, frowning seriously into the red canyon, strung with laundry lines and wires between the cliff side houses. "You do exactly what you can, and that is more than enough for me."

"Humph," Aegwynn snorts with a smirk, and a brush of her good hand against the bandaged arm. Jaina's own ankle aches in sympathy. "That's rich. I wonder when you'll realize we feel the same about you."

Jaina only pulls at the cloth dress, finding the threads and jerking them out of their wefts.

- - - - -

_Thrall remembers being very tired in the aftermath of the destruction of Durnholde. The earth hummed beneath him, and it leaves the faintest of tremors in the calves of his legs, like water rushes between them. He glories in the elements, and with the rain and the thunder of the clouds above him, he is at a sort of peace._

"_You did well by this," Grom says at his shoulder, the weathered hand clasped around the bones of his shoulder. It burns, just a little bit, and he almost flinches from the warmth. "The spirits listen and obey you, and they smile on your victory."_

"_An easy thing to think," Drek'thar says from the side, frowning and slumping from exhaustion. "Durotan's son certainly is well-thought of."_

_He frowned, feeling the rain soak into his clothes and his hair, soak up the grime and dirt of his armor like some hungry root. His hair is not very rough, he thinks, looking at the others, and he wonders if this isn't some invisible difference between himself and his brothers. It is thick, yes, and heavy on his shoulders, but it is also smooth, and carefully maintained at the temples and neck. A habit picked up during his gladiator days, and not so easily broken he finds._

_In some ways, he is not so sure he can ever be a leader of orcs. He is still yet a creature of his upbringing. _

_Under his arm is a sack, a simple burlap one and it is held gingerly and closely guarded by his shield. He does not want the others to bother it, or even think of it. He has been waiting for a time to get away, and he wishes half-heartedly that Grom and the others would leave him for a time in their march away from Durnholde Keep. (_For some reason, you are not afraid of the human soldiers that are no doubt coming. You are afraid of being seen as grieved, and oh, you are **grieved**._)_

"_I think you give me too much credit," he says, finally, when Grom's leaning towards him finally prompts him. The elder orc is unusually nosy about him now, and Thrall will do what he can to avert it. He doesn't want the concern or curiosity that he has experienced since joining up with the Frostwolves. It has lost its charm at the moment._

_Grom laughs. "You are too modest, Durotan's son," the orc says, hoisting his axe over his shoulder. "You unite our people, you lead us to victory against one of our greatest opponents, and then you turn around and act like you haven't done any of that. A Warsong would never be so humble." _

_Thrall shrugs, claps Grom on the shoulder, and trudges on. "It is just as well that I am not, my friend," he says. "I appreciate a good strong battle yell and a good axe, but never wield them as capably as you and yours in experience. I will keep Orgrim's gift, and be glad of that."_

_Grom laughs again. "Sometimes, you talk like a human."_

"_You speak like those who teach you," says Drek'thar. (_Your stomach lurches._)_

"_He is too gently spoken to speak as Blackmoore did," Grom says blithely. "He doesn't curse or cry half as much as that coward, and thanks the Spirits for that. Whoever taught him to speak common and orcish was a far more interesting bastard."_

_Beneath his shield, Thrall clutches the bag, and feels sick._

- - - - -

_Thrall also remembers the night after that. He had taken off his armor and weapons, left with naught but a linen shirt, his breeches, and the boots on his feet. _

_Beneath the curve of his shield arm is his burlap sack, and this he carries even more gently than before, and feels the air catch somewhere between his stomach and his throat, because it is not like a stone, like he has been told, but a pocket of emptiness, like having a part of himself removed and only now aware of it. _

_Thrall buries Taretha's remains quietly. He doesn't have the heart to open the bag and see her face, so he doesn't. He would like to think she is as lovely hidden in that bag now as she was in the years before._

_Around his tears, he wonders if he doesn't mourn like a human too._

- - - - -

She is tentative when she touches his arm, as careful and slow as she can, because it is dark in the halls of the keep, and Thrall is shadow-faced and guarded in his expression. She thinks that he knows she is there, because when she finally does summon enough to press her palm against his shoulder, he only tenses the smallest bit, like he is surprised that she would do it.

She's a little surprised herself, but she tries to hide that.

He doesn't change his expression very much when he finally looks at her, but Jaina knows this is not because he is angry with her, but simply that he is not as guarded with his feelings as most. She has perhaps seen one, maybe two lapses of his calm, and they were fierce as lightning to the point where she thought she could taste the tang of it on her tongue.

She smells salt, like the edges of the dry lake in Tanaris. She wonders if all orcs are so very elemental in their nature that they smell of their tears and their blood. She wouldn't know. The only ones she's ever killed were away from her. She was too much a coward to draw close. (_Sometimes, you wonder if being a mage isn't just a form of cowardice. You're too afraid to draw a sword, so you bring an unstoppable force onto your opponents, and never dirty your hands._)

"I am not in the best of spirits, Jaina," he says to her face, and his eyes are so very blue right now, she's not sure where else she ought to be.

"We rarely are these days," she says glibly, like it doesn't matter, and eases off her injured leg. It mends, slowly; her body is a very slow seamstress, and she thinks it is at times running out of thread to patch things with. "There doesn't seem very much to be happy about, but I'm sure there must be something. Vol'jin says that the Burning Blade is having difficulty working around Stormwind's prying nose in Theramore, so there's got to be some good out of all of this."

"It was nothing we couldn't have handled," says Thrall, and Jaina smiles at the 'we'. She doesn't think he even knows he says it anymore.

"Yes, we were getting closer," she says, and settles to sit on the flagstone, admire the brick and mortar as though it were as elegant to her as the white stone of Stormwind City, of Lordaeron. In a way, she supposes it is. The orcs have never had blood spilled in their new homeland as Jaina has in hers, and that should count for something. It smells of dust, and warm earth, and again she thinks of the salt. "Half-pence for your thoughts, Warchief?" she asks.

Thrall shifts on the edge of his seat. "It's nothing," he says.

"Nothing like Theramore is my nothing, or nothing as in dinner plans nothing? There's a lot of nothing to be talked about," she says, and laughs. "But I will not make light of this. I am in no position to be talking such. I am just being a pushy guest."

He looks at her, only for a moment, and she wonders if he was looking at her at all, because his eyes drift to her hair so quickly, so mournfully for a moment that she knows that she is sitting in on a part of his history, and Taretha Foxton has stolen her face again.

She grasps his hand (_and marvel only for a minute how tiny yours is; his is obviously normal, it's only right for a commander and warrior_), tender as she can. Jaina's nails are brittle, a little scalloped from magic and disrepair. She is not particular about anything like that, and it seems appropriate against him. His nails aren't long, but they are sharp and green-black, and that doesn't bother her. It is different, but it isn't wrong.

"You know I told you I'd throw ice lances at you next time you thought of me as her, remember?" she says with a grin. "Taretha wouldn't throw ice lances at you, would she?"

He laughs, a little shakily. "Been a while since that conversation, honestly. She would have thrown ice lances at someone, but I don't think me. I hope not anyway."

"She wouldn't."

His smile is a frown, and then a smile again. He clutches her fingers very lightly between his own, and they sit for a while longer still, listening to the torches pop and flare in the occasional breeze. The two guards at the door shy away from them, and Jaina is grateful for it.

"You could have probably come out of that trial for Theramore alright if you had denounced me, you know," he says gruffly. "The only problem was me, not your leadership. And Tyrande would have spoken for you, of course. You needn't have given up everything. We could have still be friends."

It is not the first time Jaina has considered it, when she is quiet and lonely at night, or when her ankle throbs and Aegwynn yawns like a sleepy cat that isn't sure where to lie down. There are days she doesn't know where she's allowed to lie down either. Everything here is so out of her element that she isn't the confident woman she remembers.

It would have been easier to simply play along with the ambassador. But where would that have left Thrall? She imagines him away for a moment, and it aches a little. She doesn't have many friends. She doesn't have anyone like him.

"It would have been wrong," she says at last.

He gives her hand what she takes to be a grateful squeeze. He doesn't say anything else.

- - - - -

It's during a late desert rain that he finds that Jaina has grown bold enough to want to go outside, to leave the confines of the adobe and wooden creaks that make his home. She doesn't ask, but sits on the sill of one of the few windows he can offer, and it offers the promise of dust, of moisture. Orgrimmar has a distinctive ambiance, and it is most at one with the earth during the watering of its streets and the summer lethargy of its people. It's like it never was anything but a part of the desert.

He breathes in. He glories in the feeling filling him, and from across the room, Jaina smiles at him.

She has started braiding her hair out of her face these days, carefully pulled behind her (_human_) ears. She doesn't bother in making herself look presentable either, and Thrall finds this comforting in some way. She sucks on her quill tips and stains her lips, and lets her tunic ride on her shoulders where she is now sporting a light tan and he has discovered she is freckled.

It is September; it has been three fortnights since he brought her here, and he is infinitely relieved when she turns to him, and asks to go outside again.

"Don't get me wrong, you have lent (_and she stresses this word_) me nothing but the finest you can offer, and I am thankful. But as much as I like watching the south end of the Drag with Aegwynn and Taka, I think it's time I took a walk."

He agrees, and quickly. He doesn't want her to change her mind. Thrall is afraid **he** will change his mind in someway if she does.

The walkways of the drag are muddy and wet when they step out into the streets, and he has opted to leave his Kor'kron Elite, if only because it makes him feel boxed in. He is a big person, and the press of armored bodies near his make him feel caged. Jaina looks at him when he waves them off, but doesn't say much else. (_You suspect she may have smiled_).

Jaina, he notices, only wears leather sandals, and they quickly sink into the mud.

"You will ruin your dress," he says, and frowns. "I will see to it that you have boots as soon as we return."

"Not at all," she laughs, "I have boots. Taka was quite insistent on them just as soon as I got my bandages off." She lifts a foot, looking at dirtied leather and toes, and seems fascinated. "My father wouldn't let me go outside without boots, you know. He thought only heathens left their feet bare. So I had to wear shoes, all the time."

Thrall frowns at the thought of Daelin Proudmoore, but tries to not show his unease. Jaina has always been tactful in her conversations, but he suspects the death of her father still chafes, as it sometimes chafes at him. (_She had looked very lost when he had rode out of Theramore, her father's blood on you and yours hands. Even if it was not your hand that felled him, it was your intent, and neither of you can forget that._)

"I'm sure he only thought of you when he did it," he says, careful. Around them, he espies a group of passing people who watch the human woman very carefully, even curiously. He wonders what they would do were he not standing directly next to her. However, Jaina pays them no mind, still looking down at her feet.

"He thought of something, I'm sure," she says, mumbling. Jaina digs her toes into the mud, watching the water sink into the treads that she has made in the soft silt. He has to remind himself not to watch the water catch in her hair. "I haven't put my toes in the mud since I was little. We still lived in Kul Tiras, and my mother was alive. She took ill, and then I wasn't allowed to wear open shoes anymore."

Thrall nods. "He feared the illness that took your mother."

She walks ahead, and Thrall finds himself catching up to walk. In his own way, he's afraid she will catch cold as well. The water keeps soaking into her cloak, and warm or not, she shivers a little and shakes the rain from her hem.

They walk for a time through the street, passing shops where their owners leaned in doorframes, smoking, maybe setting out tables at the awnings to play bones at. The rain is rare in Orgrimmar, and no one wants to work on such a humid and cooled day. A troll woman leans heavily on one hip, pushing cards between her fingers, sending Thrall and Jaina quick looks. A gossip, probably, but at least a quiet one right now. He only wishes to hear the rain and the gentle murmur of games and conversations, and the swish of water between Jaina's feet.

The troll woman is not the only one that pauses to watch, and many speak in their homeland tongues as the human passes. He recognizes slurs, sometimes outright insults, and he bristles a bit at them. Jaina walks on, largely unaffected. She smiles, the way that she usually does, and nods a head to people as she passes.

"It's not Theramore," she says at last.

"No, it isn't."

"I can wear sandals here," she says.

"Yes, whenever you'd like, so long as you spare me a thought and don't freeze your feet." She deliberately digs her feet into the ground, and he laughs a bit. "I am serious. Believe it or not, the desert is very cold in the winter." (_She will be here in the winter, you think to yourself, and wonder at that little leap your insides give._)

She shrugs her shoulders a bit. "You may laugh. I know it's rather unusual for someone to be more concerned about their feet than their living conditions, but...I don't know how to describe it. I couldn't wear sandals like I couldn't be friends with the citizenry because it would undermine my authority, and like I was expected to marry someone of noble or royal birth, and that it would be unheard of for me to do anything else."

Jaina shakes her head again, kicking up some dirty water. Thrall thinks of small children, and how he had seen them when he lived in Durnholde, being scolded for making a mess of themselves in the storm. (Y_ou always had been covered in dirt, so you hadn't understood why this was bad, only that it was and you were sorry to be so._) The image is misplaced with what he knows of the woman, and he tries to reconcile this tired (_but content, the wind tells you_) Jaina. In the end, he doesn't have to. This is just another piece of her, and he is seeing it for the first time. (_You find that you like it just fine. Jaina had in the past always been a ball of nervous energy, smiling and moving her hands gracelessly in her enthusiasm. "I can't help but think you'll find it strange," she had said once, "but I can't seem to keep still." You had worried one day she would simply overexert herself and stop moving._)

She smiles at him, another one of those real ones."I can do things here that I couldn't do before. It' s kind of overwhelming to be able to choose for yourself so completely. I've never known anything other than Dalaran and Theramore."

"It was what we built Orgrimmar for, you know," he says, "to give my people and their allies somewhere to grow."

"And you did it well, Warchief Thrall," she says with a turn. In the rain, she is rather small and thin, with hair that clumps together in threads, and her eyes are wide and her skin whitened with chill, and never mind how many looks she has drawn in the past quarter of an hour, he is happy she is there.

When she turns again in front of her to see a group of gawking women, she waves a hand peacefully, and in absolutely awful orcish, simply says "Lok'tar."

The gawking women laugh, orc and troll and tauren alike. Jaina doesn't seem phased by it at all.

- - - - -

"We'll be okay," she says, when they finally walk back towards Grommash Hold, and both of them are so soaked from the monsoon water that her hair is plastered to the side of her head, and Thrall's braids hang heavy as chains at his temples. He makes several attempts to wring them out, but she laughs when they remain heavy and in the way.

He doesn't seem phased at all by her small hands braiding his hair.

- - - - -

End.

- - - - -


End file.
